It obviously doesn't take a lot of smarts to see that something is fake, if I am taken as an example.

There are lots and lots of people with enormous hulking brain masses in their skulls and they succeed at doing wonderful scientific things all over the world.

So why is it, when it comes to something as simple as saying "the military owns the media" they suddenly revert to three year olds, shaking their wobbly noggins screaming "No! No, impossible!"

And if you say something like "the military uses technology to achieve their aims" they pace around in circles waving their arms at phantoms?

Well okay this is a ridiculous and exaggerated picture, but it usually comes to just short of this if you make any statement that implicates the media for perpetrating a hoax on 9/11. Is it the tone of voice? Is it that people really don't care why we go to war?

Is it not easy to make the connection - especially for big heads - between propaganda and justification for war? And hasn't propaganda always existed, and won't it always exist? And can't they see that it might be happening now?

It's not like Simon, D.Duck or I are giants in the scientific community, yet these very simple, pragmatic questions are left hanging in the air like hot potato when we try to pass it to anyone of remotely respected brain power.

I just lost my best friend yesterday night when I talk about government killed their's own people and she just blew up in front of me

It funny, I helped her alot more than she help me, I am her good friend and teach her how to sign language because of my wife is deaf and I also helped her how to deal with a broken heart that she just recently broke up with a guy who doesn't want her anymore

I never forget what she said: "You guys are wonderful friends who are there for me"

Funny if I ever talk about how the evil government used deception can lose a friend....

"Smart" people are normally only smart in one direction - they have narrow and deep understanding of a given area, they do not possess a broader understanding of the world. This is one of the areas Systems Dynamists/Cybernetisists, such as Stafford Beer, were exploring. Allegedly smart people too are largely owned as we have seen. The likes of Gnome Chumpsky and others.

K12 Schools were allegedly set up to address this deficiency in understanding and knowledge. They are supposed run along Systems Dynamics principles. Without getting too deep, it's a lot of reading but a fascinating subject!

"Whenever you read the newspaper or you hear anything in the news, you ask yourself two questions: who stands to make the money from what happens? and who stands to make the power from what happens? And if you haven't answered your questions in reading that article or listening to that newscast, then you are not being told the truth"

People are afraid to look into the unknown, which is what everything ultimately is anyway. Self-identification of being a little creature in a vast universe, fearing pain and annihilation, finds security in being habituated to beliefs and points of view, and to narrow avenues of particular bits of linear type of knowledge. Getting lost in that way distracts from the inevitable day when the unknown must be faced full on. Most people seem to be easily led around by the nose with these seemingly safe and comfortable avenues of self-identification, by those who have strong predatory natures. The so-called 'smarter ones' may have a greater investment in their comfort zones of self-identification. They are afraid to do the work of becoming more aware, and of dropping the pretense that they know a lot of stuff about themselves and their world. It's a bubble of illusion. Don't pop it! :o

"It's not a matter of what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true." - Henry Kissinger

I think people dont like to think about how little control they actually exercise over their own lives, people are prepared to do extraordinary feats of assness to maintain the dysfunctional precepts upon which comfy little lives are based on.

The "lack of control" train of thought, in someone who is a control freak shatters their sense of center, opening the door to a sense of horror, so profound they are immediately self protecting themselves by re iterating the programming blocks of disbelief with a sense of anger, subtly expressing the sense of "how f#cking dare you disturb me and try to wake me up, i wuz sleeping and enjoying a nice dream".

Feelings like that are expressed very easily when faced with the alternative of actually facing up to the reality of being totally owned by something so dangerous over which there is no control, something that could destroy you and everything dear to you with no sense of restraint or conscience just because it can.People find it hard to believe because it is hard to believe something so outrageous when you can carry on within your comfy little cell.

Of course some people don't think that deeply and are just working on the sense of they know everything anyway and there's no way they could be wrong about something so big and in your face, an example my dad, he believes that the press is less controlled than it was 30 years ago, when i try to explain to him that the press is a tool of the government designed to feed you with inconsequential bullshit whilst maintaining the secrecy required for evil deeds to be committed, he doesn't believe it.Instead he's happy to carry on thinking that journalists are out there looking for stories and no matter what they are they get printed, the reason no stories about co-opted government and the attacks that it has made on the people, are not in the paper is because it hasn't happened.He defends this point of view with angry festering defiance, there's no way he could be wrong he's too clever by half for something like that to be going on...yeah right.

So why is it, when it comes to something as simple as saying "the military owns the media" they suddenly revert to three year olds, shaking their wobbly noggins screaming "No! No, impossible!"

And if you say something like "the military uses technology to achieve their aims" they pace around in circles waving their arms at phantoms?...Is it not easy to make the connection - especially for big heads - between propaganda and justification for war? And hasn't propaganda always existed, and won't it always exist? And can't they see that it might be happening now?

As I've said before, Americans are the stupidest, most gullible, and hate-filled people in the world. They don't care that the US has murdered over one million CIVILIANS in Iraq/Afghanistan this decade.

They happily accept the warm embrace of American Exceptionalism - the idea that, whenever the US government/military acts, both here and overseas, it both intends to do good, and actually does so. And when things don't work out, it is always mistakes, not malicious intent, on our part.

As I've said before, Americans are the stupidest, most gullible, and hate-filled people in the world.

They don't care that the US has murdered over one million CIVILIANS in Iraq/Afghanistan this decade.

[/QUOTE]Very good point, I honestly good not have said it better :D

For a start the fact 1 million people have been Killed for "Fiction Vicsims" is disgusting.. I struggle too fight through my tears for a minute of silence for the the real Victims of 9/11. we arnt asked wether this is justified

Its not jusified !!!! It's not REAL !! :angry:

I'm Australian (yankee parents), my whole country has followed the US into these countries. people In my home city of Perth (S.A.S. base central). and we have soldiers dying reguarly.

Brianv, It is very realistic when you say that smart people are only smart in a certain area. WHY ARE SMART PEOPLE FOOLED?- 1-they dont time too research themsleves and let other so called "smart people in that particuler field do the work" 2- prehaps their emotions have been played with therefore emotion has over taken whats real.

How were the smart people ofthe world fooled when a "CNN" reporter manage to meet Osama bin Laden before 9/11. this is a great vid-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09ddQsDibEU... target="_blank" class="postlink. In it he states " Another (9/11) socialillusion, social engineering project too change the minds and the attitudes and the beliefs of the people of the world and espicially the United States too bring about one world socalist tolltarian goverment. So why do all these fools belive this charade? "that a cnn reporter and his little camera crew. Can DO-- what all the money, all the assets all the eaves dropping, and all the intelligence, and all the sattelites, and all the undercover operatives in the world. Can never do? It's because they are not trying..they dont wan't too Osama Bin Laden is thier creation... and he is serving them well. "

As I've said before, Americans are the stupidest, most gullible, and hate-filled people in the world. They don't care that the US has murdered over one million CIVILIANS in Iraq/Afghanistan this decade.

They happily accept the warm embrace of American Exceptionalism - the idea that, whenever the US government/military acts, both here and overseas, it both intends to do good, and actually does so. And when things don't work out, it is always mistakes, not malicious intent, on our part.

Stupidest ... hm, well we definitely have an education problem. We often don't know basic facts about ... anything. So that might contribute to the gullible part. But if you mean stupid in the sense of being numb and dumb ... like people from the show Jackass ... I guess we certainly have an enormous number of those types of people. And even stupider. People tying things to stupid things, dragging things in stupid ways, getting hit by buses and cars, falling off of things in stupid ways, leaving things stupid. All these stories coming from the dumb Midwest, Florida, California, all over -- people with no street smarts, people with seemingly true thinking problems. Is that unique to America though?

As for hate-filled, I am not sure. I feel like I meet hate-filled people everywhere.

And yet ... the biggest grudges, the longest lasting pain that is passed from generation to generation does seem to often come from the 'Great Experiment' - that whole slavery, genocide, puritan, f#cking with other peoples thing.

Perhaps 'American Exceptionalism' does have merit as a concept to keep in mind. The world is so big, the "United States" so young ... maybe this is just the USA's "lying embittered teenager" phase and it will eventually get better.

But people being stupid doesn't answer the problem of when they are not stupid. When they are really really smart. And they just don't apply their knowledge to what they are being told. It's more like "authoritarian exceptionalism."

"It's only true if I'm told it's true in an entertaining way with song and dance. Otherwise, it's probably not true."

It's because accepting the truth about the world has nothing to do with intellectual capacity. You could have the best command of the English language, be a mathematician, or even a rocket scientist. 9/11 could fall right up your alley in terms of structural engineering or aviation.

It's not about how intelligent you are because one thing that counters/negates intellect is denial. Denial as a reverse availability heuristic. It's a defense mechanism, repelling the mind from what should be seemingly obvious.

It's the same concept at play when someone is in love with someone who is cheating on them. They may see all the warning signs, other people may warn them, but they only lash out at the people who do that because they want to belief the other person is faithful/trustworthy.

So it's the concept of denial, at work why people live in cognitive dissonance. On one hand they know of the human capacity to do evil. They even know of historical examples. But they don't want to accept the possibility of it happening today, particularly in their own country.

So they blindly give their leaders the benefit of the doubt even suspending their disbelief no matter how little credibility there is in the account they give us.

Smart people are fooled, I think, because we live in a society in which 4% of us are psychopaths. Psychopaths, according to Dr Robert Hare, operate without conscience, are incapable of empathy, guilt or loyality to anyone but themselves. Thomas Sheridan, an Irish researcher into the field, says that most psychopaths, although devious, are actually, incompetent, untalented (except in mimicry and acting) and driven by a "predator consciousness" which allows (prompts) them to manipulate the egos of the rest of us non-psychopaths, and short-circuits our frontal lobes thus rendering us confused, disoriented and vulnerable to scamming. Many white-collar psychopaths are to be found in corporate and political arenas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKWyfojIQDU and are actively recruited by institutes such as the London School of Economics and the Tavistock Institute. Some, who he terms - "proto-psychopaths", are otherwise normal human beings who have been corrupted by their elitist parents (in rituals such as blooding in fox-hunting) and raised without unconditional love. We live in a web spun by devious moral imbeciles and their moronic henchmen (hence the shoddy work done in the fakery), which only remains impenetrable as long as the decent human beings are too busy, stressed or distracted to cut through the flim-flam. It takes events such as 911, Bush looking for WMD under his chair in the Oval Office and Mickey Mouse in Space to wake the smart people up. Keep on investigating, Simon - I can't wait to see what you and others on this forum unearth.Waterwitch

I remember watching Korean TV reenact this experiment on one of its popular science programs, and then going on for entertainment's sake to the man on the street, for example reading the opposite candidate's platform to a supporter, who would wholeheartedly agree, before being told the truth, and they announced that only 2% of the public voted from logic. At first you might think, 'oh, I hope that's me making the logical decision', but really, who would that 2% be, without emotion? autistic people?

ScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2006) — When it comes to forming opinions and making judgments on hot political issues, partisans of both parties don't let facts get in the way of their decision-making, according to a new Emory University study. The research sheds light on why staunch Democrats and Republicans can hear the same information, but walk away with opposite conclusions.

The investigators used functional neuroimaging (fMRI) to study a sample of committed Democrats and Republicans during the three months prior to the U.S. Presidential election of 2004. The Democrats and Republicans were given a reasoning task in which they had to evaluate threatening information about their own candidate. During the task, the subjects underwent fMRI to see what parts of their brain were active. What the researchers found was striking.

"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," says Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory who led the study. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts." Westen and his colleagues will present their findings at the Annual Conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Jan. 28.

Once partisans had come to completely biased conclusions -- essentially finding ways to ignore information that could not be rationally discounted -- not only did circuits that mediate negative emotions like sadness and disgust turn off, but subjects got a blast of activation in circuits involved in reward -- similar to what addicts receive when they get their fix, Westen explains.

"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," says Westen. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."

During the study, the partisans were given 18 sets of stimuli, six each regarding President George W. Bush, his challenger, Senator John Kerry, and politically neutral male control figures such as actor Tom Hanks. For each set of stimuli, partisans first read a statement from the target (Bush or Kerry). The first statement was followed by a second statement that documented a clear contradiction between the target's words and deeds, generally suggesting that the candidate was dishonest or pandering.

Next, partisans were asked to consider the discrepancy, and then to rate the extent to which the person's words and deeds were contradictory. Finally, they were presented with an exculpatory statement that might explain away the apparent contradiction, and asked to reconsider and again rate the extent to which the target's words and deeds were contradictory.

Behavioral data showed a pattern of emotionally biased reasoning: partisans denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate that they had no difficulty detecting in the opposing candidate. Importantly, in both their behavioral and neural responses, Republicans and Democrats did not differ in the way they responded to contradictions for the neutral control targets, such as Hanks, but Democrats responded to Kerry as Republicans responded to Bush.

While reasoning about apparent contradictions for their own candidate, partisans showed activations throughout the orbital frontal cortex, indicating emotional processing and presumably emotion regulation strategies. There also were activations in areas of the brain associated with the experience of unpleasant emotions, the processing of emotion and conflict, and judgments of forgiveness and moral accountability.

Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning (as well as conscious efforts to suppress emotion). The finding suggests that the emotion-driven processes that lead to biased judgments likely occur outside of awareness, and are distinct from normal reasoning processes when emotion is not so heavily engaged, says Westen.

The investigators hypothesize that emotionally biased reasoning leads to the "stamping in" or reinforcement of a defensive belief, associating the participant's "revisionist" account of the data with positive emotion or relief and elimination of distress. "The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data," Westen says.

The study has potentially wide implications, from politics to business, and demonstrates that emotional bias can play a strong role in decision-making, Westen says. "Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts,' " Westen says